victorian

Over the last decade, there has been an eruption of scholarly interest in the practices, methodologies, and techne of reading. Best and Marcus’s surface reading—which has influenced a broad sweep of New Formalist criticism—emerged alongside distant reading, one of the major interpretive paradigms of the digital humanities. The development of these twenty-first-century movements has been matched by renewed interest in twentieth-century formalisms, including the history of the New Criticism and the proto-neuroscientific approaches to reading taken by critics such as I.A. Richards.

Co-emergenceCo-creationCo-existence 4th to 6th September 2019, University of PlymouthConfirmed Plenary Speakers

• Greg Garrard (University of British Columbia)
• David Higgins (University of Leeds)
• Adeline Johns-Putra (University of Surrey)
• Harriet Tarlo (Sheffield Hallam University)

It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories. (Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble)

Ongoing public debate over politically charged public monuments reminds us how much is at stake in the shaping of cultural memory, whether through durable physical structures, portable or reproducible aesthetic works, or discursive representations. How were monumentality and the preservation of the past conceived in the nineteenth century? How might we reconceive our own ways of remembering the nineteenth century? We invite proposals for papers and panels that explore monuments in the broadest sense of the word—those from as well as those about the nineteenth century. We also welcome papers that consider the concepts of monumentality and/or memory as they pertain to humanistic disciplines and engage with nineteenth-century studies.

Website: https://breakingbounds2019.wordpress.com/

Date: Saturday, May 11th, 2019 (9:00- 18:00)

Location: University of Portsmouth  

Organisers: Beatrice Ashton-Lelliott; Lucie Cook; Debbie Parker Kinch; Rachel Rawlings and Sara Zadrozny

First keynote speaker: Professor Gail Marshall,  University of Reading

Second keynote speaker: Professor June Purvis,  University of Portsmouth 

 “We shall and must break bounds at intervals, despite the terrible revenge that awaits our return.”   - Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

Many novelists in various national literatures touched upon the theme of an emancipated woman in the long nineteenth century. Imagination, as it is believed, has no borders and is dialogical in its nature.  Different voices of great emancipationist writers merged into one influential symphony liberating and awakening consciousness of slaves—males and females. If writers did not support directly or sympathized with the image of an emancipated woman, they did reflect on her place in society and her belonging. World literature allows us to take a closer look at the imagined and real women's lives, at their biographies and reminiscent writing.